TUNNY: THE RISE AND FALL OF BRITAIN'S BIGGEST FISH. By Chris Berry.

2010 1st edition. 8vo (160 x 240mm). Pp192. B/w photographs and illustrations, maps. Blue boards, spine titled in silver-gilt.

"It were easy in them days. Around the tenth of August the herring would come in. The ships would be six to ten miles off, Dutch, Russian, German, and Scotch, hundreds of them. At night the sea was lit up like a town. You'd just go to the first ship with a crate of beer, and ask whether they'd seen any tunny fish." Although known in British waters since at least the 1350's, fishing for tunny as a sport only began after the First World War. Tunny fishing rapidly became fashionable, drawing the Riviera set to Scarborough every August. Pursuit of these monster fish resumed after the Second World War, ending with the sudden extinction of the migratory herring shoals on which the tunny fed.